ch-ch-ch-changes

i'm staring birth control pills for the first time ever today. nothing fancy, orthotricyclene low - the ones they'll sell students for $10 a pack to keep us from getting preggers. have decided that 8pm is as good a time as any to take them and have set my cell phone to remind me at least for the next couple days.

i'm a bit worried about this actually. ive just had so many friends for whom birth control has been horrible - weight gain (apparently it's cause the meds increase appetite), break outs, awful mood swings/depression, etc - and i really can't deal with any of those. my doctor told me that i should stay on them for at least 3 months before trying to change, as that's how long my body might take to get used to them, but if i start freaking out, i'm going to go see my friends at the clinic over christmas.

mostly this worry comes from the fact that i'm taking these not so much because i'm having sex - which i'm not and am not likely to anytime soon, though i do want to be safe in case it does happen (please?) - but because of the wretched ups and downs i've been having along with pms (remember those posts from earlier this week?). i'd rather just take one pill that'll keep me from getting preggers to boot than start taking something for my anxiety, too. i know it's a long shot, but if it doesn't help or makes things worse, i'm going to keep trying other brands until something does. i'd ask for recommendations, but apparently everyone's body reacts differently. sigh. dumb hormones.

so we'll see! here goes nothing!

upcoming adventures

if i haven't mentioned how excited i am about my upcoming trips lately, whoops. cause it's all i think about these days.

for thanksgiving i'm heading north to minnesota with ks and two first year guys she's also adopted for the holiday. we're leaving weds after i finish up seminar and driving to winona - five to six hours - for a weekend that will include, according to ks, "a trip there includes taking a hunting boat across the river to some bars on the Wisconsin side in the middle of the night;" "the Turkey Bowl, which is a football (the American kind) contest held annually by my extended family on Thanksgiving Day. You do not need to be good at football or even know how to play the game to participate. Also, if someone passes the ball to anyone under the age of 8, it is an unspoken rule that you will pretend to run very hard after them but let them score the touchdown anyway;" and any/all of the following: "bowling, drinking, spending time with my cousins, drinking with my cousins, drinking with people from my high school, sleeping, and eating the best doughnuts you've ever had." sounds like a good time to me! food, drink, family, games, more food and drink....

then, in a little less than three weeks now, i'm heading back east to see all sorts of friends before going back to california for the holidays. stops to include: cambridge, maybe new haven, new york, and dc. three to four days in each place (not including new haven - that'll just be a night if i do stop), many many people to see, a ball!, either the rockettes or the nutcracker, more drinking, more eating, and all the people i love. i talk to someone i'm going to see most days online and each one makes me more excited.

it's not that i don't love being here (i do and more so each day, despite desperate posts), it's just that the people i'm going to see were my life for four years and just know me so much better than people here. mostly of course, its theater people - boardlove! -, but i'm also going to see my cty crowd for the first time in one place since 2004 - somehow they've all ended up in the dc area, aside from me of course -, and rs. rs! who i talk to pretty much every day on gchat, but who i'm going to get to see! and stay with! rs! hurrah!

something else i've been thinking about lately: i talk a lot more here than i have ever before in my life. in class, with friends, i'm chatty. i'm sometimes clever, sometimes snarky - "like the surveyors she was writing about, she didn't venture more than a mile from the border they were drawing." but mostly, i just pipe up more frequently. which, i think, more than anything, shows that this is a good place for me. everywhere else in my life, i've been the listener, the nodder, the ear to unburden to, and it's not that i don't have quiet moments, that there aren't places where i have nothing to say, but that i'm much more willing to interject now. and i love it. who knows what'll happen when i'm back amongst my boisterous friends who are used to quiet me. have i actually changed, or is it just that people here don't like to hear their own voices as much as my friends elsewhere?

too much of a good thing...

more productive today. barely. but I did get out of the house, go to work and the library, read enough to make class tomorrow at least vaguely interesting. And I started reading for my seminar paper - a terribly romantical account of a Guatemalan journalist's travels around the country. All silences of the streets and beauties of the colored light and the reflection of a woman's eyes through window glass. And this is what I get to write about this year! Hurrah!

also, after much hemming and hawing and making excuses, I finally made a doctor's appointment. November 6th, 8:30 am, I shall finally make sure I'm as healthy as I pretend to be and talk to someone about birth control. or something for my moods. and maybe ask about my wrist as well. this is beginning to sound like the appointment my mom had in September. I know doctors are busy... I probably should not set my hopes too high.

This cisco kid needs to leave Morocco so that CS (wonder friend from the Big H supposedly doing human rights work for the year) can get back to doing what he's been given money to do. I love that boy, I really do, but he's easily swayed away from doing what he spent the first part of the fall preparing to do. Namely, put together a project and stick with it. I do worry about him... He does have to report back and I have the feeling that his Fulbright hopes might be more successful if he's able to prove himself to the people funding him now.

not muches:
The man who roller bladed by me wearing knee, elbow, and wrist guards and a pith helmet.